Seven Dials - Anne Perry [147]
She drew in her breath as though she was going to argue, then she let it out silently and turned half away from him. The light on her smooth face shone like polished silk. Her skin was blemishless, her cheekbones high, her nose long and straight, her eyes a little slanted upwards. It was a face of passion and immense dignity, but oddly, it was not without humor. The tiny lines, visible because he was close to her, spoke of laughter, not easy as of mere good humor, but of intelligence and irony as well.
“I think that the man who sent you knew that you could not succeed,” he went on. He was not certain whether it was a shadow that moved, or if her body stiffened a trifle under the silk of her dress. “I believe his purpose was different,” he continued. “And that cotton was only the reason he gave you, because it is one you could serve with all your effort, whatever the cost to yourself.”
“You are mistaken,” she replied, without looking at him. “If I was naive, then I have paid a high price for it, but I did not kill Lieutenant Lovat.”
“But you are prepared to hang for it?” he said with surprise. “And not only yourself, but Mr. Ryerson as well.”
She flinched as if he had struck her, but she did not make any sound, nor move her position.
“Do you think perhaps because he is a minister in the government that they will let him off?” he asked.
She turned to face him at last, her eyes wide and almost black.
“Have you not realized yet that he has enemies?” he said more loudly than he wished to, but he could not afford gentleness. She might back away, evade the truth again. “And whoever sent you has far bigger aims than cotton, in Egypt or Manchester.”
“That is not true.” She stated it as a fact. There was certainty in her eyes, then, even as he was watching, it wavered before she could master it.
“If you did not kill Lovat, then who did?” he said far more quietly. He had not yet made up his mind whether to say anything of the massacre to her, or even to hint at it. He watched her, searching for anything in her expression, however fleeting, to betray the hatred that could lie behind a murder of revenge. So far he had seen nothing at all, not even a shadow.
“I don’t know,” she said simply. “But you said it was not to do with cotton. What, then?”
It was almost impossible to believe she knew. And if she did not, and he told her, might her love of her country, and of justice, then impel her to speak, perhaps even to make her crime seem justified? Would a judge mitigate her sentence because of such provocation? Pitt would have. “Other political reasons,” he said evasively. “To expose old wrongs with a view to inciting violence, even rebellion.”
“Like the dervishes in the Sudan?” she said bleakly.
“Why not? Knowing what you do now, do you really believe you ever had a chance of changing the cotton industry, before the political and financial tides have changed, no matter what Mr. Ryerson might believe or wish for?”
She thought about it for several moments before conceding. “No,” she said almost under her breath.
“Then surely it is possible that whoever sent you also knew that, and had in mind another plan altogether?” he pressed.
She did not answer, but he saw that she had understood.
“And he does not care if you hang for a murder you did not commit,” he went on. “Or that Ryerson should also.”
That hurt her. Her body stiffened and some of the richness of color faded from her skin.
“Could he have killed Lovat?” he asked.
Her head moved fractionally, but it was an assent.
“How?” he asked.
“He . . . he poses as my servant . . .”
Of course! Tariq el Abd, silent, almost invisible. He could have taken her gun and shot Lovat, then called the police himself to make sure they came, and found Ryerson. He could easily have organized the whole thing, because she would naturally have given him any letter to deliver to Lovat. No one would question it; in fact, they